


Months and years of untold stories

by crowsoup



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: EWE, M/M, Mostly Fluff, Non-Chronological, Some angst, otp challenge
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-15
Updated: 2016-08-15
Packaged: 2018-08-08 23:14:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7777438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowsoup/pseuds/crowsoup
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An attempt to string 30 short scenes together and make a story out of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Months and years of untold stories

**Author's Note:**

> It was a long time since I attempted at writing. I am trying to warm myself up. What's better than completing an OTP challenge? POV might alternate between our boys (or men, depending on the time frame).

 

Draco looked at the hand in front of him. His mouth was bitter; his hands were cold. A strange buzzing sound kept ringing between ears. Every time it crushed into his skull, he tasted blood. His eyelids moved like rusted iron grates when he tried to shut it.

When he opened his eyes again, Potter’s hand was still there.

The Auror escorting him fidgeted silently. He may have Potter to thank for the Auror’s lack of complaint. Draco began to scowl but found his face frozen by the icy air of the Wizengamot. There were much too many people in the courtroom for his taste, yet they couldn’t even warm it up, which were supposed to be their only use back in that room. Draco held his head high through the trial and looked straight at whoever questioning him. He could hear father’s footsteps when he got on the stand. He thought of the dark corridor that father might be heading to. There was no rotten kiss waiting for father. There would be no kiss for father, rotten or warm or familial, for the next ten long years.

He was waiting for the same fate. He did not care. Regardless of everything, he would at least look like a Malfoy. He only hoped that fate would not befall mother, who he had not seen once since Hogwartz. “If it really came to that, I hope, at least for the last time, I can……” But he killed the thought immediately. He had learnt better in the last two years.

“What do you have to say?” Someone asked. He stared at that people’s chin instead of his eyes, which he learned over the last year, but still managed to recognize who that was. He was reminded of exquisite parties at his youth, with all the family acquaintances and connections. Words were warm; gifts were delicate and expensive. Pictures and sound and smell from the past mingled with cold winds and poisonous gaze from around the room. Head pounding, he said:” No.”

He waited. In the silence, he allowed memories of Wiltshire into his mind. He thought of the bushes on the ground, flowers among the veins, peacocks among the trees. He pushed away the image of muddy light against cold corridors and dark prison cells. They might be what awaits him, but fond memories were his to keep. (A voice whispered “Dementors” in his mind, but he ignored it.) Wizengamot was never bright, but he imagined it was four in the afternoon outside. Standing by the window, he was in his room. Elves were busy cutting overgrown curtains of vein, beyond which lied father’s favorite trout pond, covered by golden fog under the sun. Strips of ethereal beams hang lightly over the water, swaying and buzzing in a lazy breeze.

“I will testify for Draco Malfoy.” A faint voice drifted up from downstairs. He could see Vincent waving to him, standing on the ground.

Slipping out from the trance, Draco opened his eyes. Potter was standing in front of him, wearing briskly clean robes, not a dot of mud on his face. He looked like a savage with that ashen face and the disaster he called hair. Without even a glance at Draco’s direction, he began to speak.

The testimony was clear and brutal. Draco stand rigidly through the recount of the utter failures of his life, in front of all the powerful figures of wizarding Britain. Nothing veiled, he listened to all his shame and cowardice, all the threats and abuses he endured. Harry Potter retold his unwillingness to identify his bitter school rival and the only hope to the Dark Lord, as if any sane people would do worse. Harry Potter explained Draco Malfoy as a silly, piteous and weak boy, but not his father, never his father. A Malfoy, of course, but not in the ways that matter.

Of course, he was a far cry from good. He was nothing loyal or courageous or bright, he was not even cunning enough.

The vote came out, he was absolved. But he was left without a home, a manor, and a vault. Price paid, he was then swiftly ushered out of the room, his input and thoughts was not needed. Potter rushed out, stopped him in the corridor, and offered a hand. He was not obliged in any way to please Potter; he was in so much debt that he must humor Potter.

He looked down on the hand, ears ringing.

“If you take it, you won’t worth a knut. You will be nothing.” He told himself. He was a thousand shards in the shape of Draco Malfoy, a shadow of what he was supposed to be. He was ruined: hope gone in the sixth year, pride in the seventh. He was but a paper shell held together by starch paste. If he took Harry Potter’s hand, pay the savior back with a handshake and took what he longed for seven devastatingly long years, he would have nothing to fight for, no grudge to hold. He will lose his last shelter, and expose the undignified ruin underneath.

A cold voice whispered to his nape: no family, no fortune, no future, and worst of all, no pride. Potter had saved him yet again, so he had no enemy (not in the ways that mattered, his mind offered treacherously). What would a Slytherin worth without an enemy?

Potter began to lower his arms, face closing down. The brave sincerity was slipping away, replaced by rising disappointment. It was aloof and mild, as if it didn’t hurt or didn’t even matter, for him (finally!) to be rejected by Draco. He wouldn’t even read it as a sign of Draco’s defiance and power. Draco shivered: that distanced look impaled him right down to the bone. It was more devastating than _Crucio_.

He grabbed Potter’s hand. His hands and face were cold, but his chest and eyes were burning. Potter’s hand was covered in scar and calluses, possibly souvenirs of his year on the run. It was very, very warm. It was warm like water, instead of sun and fire. That water-like heat was solid in Draco’s hand, yet Draco fear it would flow away. He grabbed the hand tighter. It should hurt, but Potter didn’t so much as blink, nor did he complain. He looked at Draco with a most peculiar expression.

Draco’s eyes were burning in prickling pain. He thought of the abandoned washroom, the floor covered by water, himself lying in the numbing cold. Water was resting inside him, now. It was scalding his eyelids.

“Malfoy?” Potter asked uneasily. Draco wanted to laugh: Potter didn’t know; he didn’t have the slightest idea what had he done. He was Harry Potter, and yet he knew nothing. But Draco was in no place to ridicule Potter: he was the same.

Draco stretched tall and tensed his shoulder. Potter looked at his eyes, and then their hands. He opened his mouth. He looked nothing like seven years ago, yet he bored such shocking resemblance to the obnoxious little hero standing outside the gate to the Great Hall. Obnoxious and brilliant: he was that. Draco never thought otherwise, deep in his own heart.

Terrible things lurked at the corner on Potter’s face, shockingly open. Draco couldn’t bear it. It might wake certain words up in his mind if he looked at it for another second.

He snapped back his hand, franticly scraped the bottom of the pit he once called pride, produced a flimsy condescending look and a nod, turned and left. His face and eyes were icy, but the touch of warmth was still lingering on his fingers. He cradled that hand in his pocket.

The door to the Wizengamot opened again. Potter walked in, so did his mother. She was coming up to the stand.

Following the guard, Draco Malfoy walked into the depth of the corridor.


End file.
